Idle Tears
by fahRENheit2006
Summary: Short one-shot a few years after the Destroy ending of ME3. Things are never the same when you survive an ordeal like that. M!Shep/Ashley, from Ash's perspective. Brief profanity.


**Ren's Note:**

_Newbie writer alert. I've been devouring ME fics since about Christmas and couldn't resist dropping my own in there. So much nifty emotion and drama packed into this delightful game series, no? For my spacer/hero Shepard, it was always Ashley Williams for that guy; their rapport and dynamic was among my favorites, because they both seemed to just Get each other._

_This is a couple years after the Destroy ending of ME3, where Shepard survives. Can you ever really recover from something like that? Ash just doesn't know._

"_Tears, Idle Tears" by Lord Alfred Tennyson_

_Mass Effect owned by Bioware._

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><p>COMPOSE NEW MESSAGE<br>- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

DATE: 04:11:52 AM, 22/06/2188  
>TO: Shepard, J.<br>FROM: Williams, A.  
>SUBJECT: (no subject)<p>

Shepard,

I have a few regrets. Some big. Some small. The little ones I can roll off my back in any given day. But the big ones, they just gnaw and gnaw until they start to consume all the little victories we squeeze out of each day.

I regret this thing between us. What it's become.

It isn't fair. I know it's not fair. It's not your fault, either. It is what it is.

I know you didn't want to change. But after what you've endured, it was long overdue. I'm just sorry it took so long for me to see the You that was in front of me all that time. On Horizon. On the Citadel. Two years of hurting took so long to overcome and that's on me, Shepard. I was so afraid to trust you again, it was easier to just throw the walls back up than look you in the eye and admit the truth. Jesus, I've had 30 years to practice being a human being and I still suck at it. But at least I smartened up some, right? Our time together before the final Reaper Battle was... incredible.

And now I'm left with this new, other You. I knew that battle would change everything. I guess I just hoped that it wouldn't change you.

It was the best day of my life when I heard the shout from the response teams that they found someone in all that rubble from the Citadel. When they found you.

God. You looked like shit, Skipper. Your beautiful face all banged up. I know, I know. Love should be all selfless and "It doesn't matter what someone looks like on the outside, it's the inside that counts." Or one of your other cheesy greeting-card platitudes that I love to hate. But they fixed you up good, and I was relieved.

I know those long months in rehab were hell for you. They'd be hell for anyone. And the other stuff was hard to take too, but it would have been harder if I had to wake up to a strange face every morning. I know you miss combat, but you can't charge into battle with a prosthetic leg. Or with whatever else the Crucible did to all your Cerberus implants. Fusing them or melting them or whatever the scientists say happened. I didn't mind getting used to a lower gravity environment so you'd be in less pain from all your joints locking up all the time, from the added weight of all that dead metal inside you.

At least you didn't end up a cripple, right? I'm from tough military stock, I know how to handle crap like that. It's hard, but do-able. Granddad wasn't the same after Shanxi, either. You're both the same. Tough old bastards. And I love you for it. I know it kills you that you can't pick up a gun again. But you were always more than just a nice ass with a scope attached. And I'm grateful to still see that spark in your eyes that tells me everything will be okay. Even though it's just sometimes, not all the time.

Just one of the many things that I thank God for every day. You're always Thing #1, Shepard. But the list of things I pray for is getting longer and longer. I know God has His hands full with spreading hope across a very fragile galaxy trying to recover from a very terrible thing. I also know how much He's looked out for you. And I'm so grateful.

But I'm trapped. Under the weight of our fame, our past, and your demons. I don't know how to help you let them go, Skipper. It kills me to see you thrashing around from yet another nightmare. You feel those losses in a place so deep even I can't reach you there. And I want to. God, how I want to. I want to save you the way you saved me from myself.

I know you noticed I took up smoking. I needed something to keep my mouth busy, otherwise it would end up in one long argument from sun up to sundown. "Did you talk to the doctor about the dreams? Why won't you talk to me? When will you stop blaming yourself?"

How long are we going to live in this half life, Shepard? Rebuilding is hard. Damn hard. We've been practically quarian nomads since we joined the military, so I get that settling down is an abrupt halt to at least a decade's worth of wandering with just a boomstick and Alliance-issued fatigues.

I'm glad we eloped at least. Because the drama of the "Fairytale wedding! Years in the making!" like all the vids were hyping would have broken my brain. If I had to tell one more reporter how you proposed I was going to put my fist through a wall. I'm glad my sisters and our moms could see us off, at least. We owed them that, right?

And I surprised myself at how easy it was to fall into the married life routine, even with the occasional nosey reporter showing up demanding soundbytes. I somehow still ended up a military wife, tough because I have to be, even though we don't have the cliché military home life. But I'm starting to feel trapped by this routine now.

Because every day is a constant battle for me. I have this nervous fight-or-flight anxiety whenever I look at or talk to or kiss you. I'm afraid you'd be better off without me, and sometimes I'm even more afraid you're better off **with** me. I don't know which is worse and it changes depending on the day.

I'm terrified to wake up one day and it's all been a dream. Even the bad parts, where you're shutting me out and I'm screaming at you to let me in. Or I push you away and you try to touch me and I flinch. Not at you. Never at you. But I'm scared of the thing inside you. That weight you had to carry for years, that weight that killed you and stole you from me, that weight that has you waking up gasping and flailing almost every night.

I don't know what to do, Shepard. I've read enough sappy poets to pray that "Love conquers all" and that one day you'll wake up and be happy.

Are you happy? With you? With me? With us?

With what you have, no matter how fragile or imperfect or rough it might be?

_Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean,_  
><em>Tears from the depth of some divine despair<em>  
><em>Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes,<em>  
><em>In looking on the happy autumn-fields,<em>  
><em>And thinking of the days that are no more.<em>

_Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail,_  
><em>That brings our friends up from the underworld,<em>  
><em>Sad as the last which reddens over one<em>  
><em>That sinks with all we love below the verge;<em>  
><em>So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more.<em>

_Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawns_  
><em>The earliest pipe of half-awaken'd birds<em>  
><em>To dying ears, when unto dying eyes<em>  
><em>The casement slowly grows a glimmering square;<em>  
><em>So sad, so strange, the days that are no more.<em>

_Dear as remembered kisses after death,_  
><em>And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feign'd<em>  
><em>On lips that are for others; deep as love,<em>  
><em>Deep as first love, and wild with all regret;<em>  
><em>O Death in Life, the days that are no more!<em>

- Ash  
>- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -<p>

[SEND] [SAVE DRAFT] [DISCARD]

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><p>"Good morning. Couldn't sleep?"<p>

"I was just… checking my messages. How did you sleep?"

"About the same. But …I'm glad you're here, Ash. I know this is hard. On you. On me. It means everything to me that you're here."

"Shepard…"

"Shhhh. I love you. It's going to be a beautiful day."

"Yes. Yes it is."

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><p>[DRAFT DELETED] 06:45:07 AM, 2206/2188


End file.
